


(a different time, a different name)

by let_them_be_happy



Series: three (and a half) times owen & tati met [3]
Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: Gen, everything is painful, fuck this makes me sad, ha this is all pain to me, i still don't, i'm sorry i had no idea what i was doing, owen's a whiny bitch, sort of, tatiana's stupid for taking this course of action but i couldn't think of a good reason, von nazi's an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8108527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/let_them_be_happy/pseuds/let_them_be_happy
Summary: 1957 to 1961 - a Russian redhead mourns a friend and meets a man who shouldn't be so familiar.





	

It’s two years before she hears about him again, not that she was expecting to ever again. She doesn’t know how they find her, but MI6 finds her, someone there clearly thinking that she needs to know, that she was important to him. 

The voice over the line is familiar, and Tatiana identifies it as Raven, the man she nearly killed had she not heard Kuznetsov’s voice. He addresses her as Hummingbird, either unaware or not willing to address her by her true name, her Russian name. 

He tells her that Kuznetsov, Bluebird, Carvour is dead. The details are classified - always classified in their line of work - but his Russian farewell is Raven’s way of telling her where it happened and a few of the players involved. 

They were Russians, and Tatiana’s not sure she can forgive herself for that, letting Carvour be killed while in Russia, working with Russians, his only Russian contact (that she knows of) far out of his reach and possibly already dead for all that he knew when he went into the mission.

She doesn’t have time to grieve, to mourn him properly in a way that she thinks would be fitting for a man who did so much for her, inspired her to be so much more than she was. (There never seems to be time to grieve properly in this business, not for her lost family, and certainly not for a man she barely knew.) So she moves on, and if she picks up a few more drinks than she used to, then there is no one to know. She takes up freelance jobs - those are the only jobs available to her now, at least until her government stops looking for her and she can go home to her family. 

That’s how she meets Baron Von Nazi, four years after she was told a man she knew as Kuznetsov was killed. He offers Tatiana the freedom she wants, the ability to stop running, to go home to her family and know that they will be safe. Russia won’t go after her or her family ever again.

There’s a catch though, and that’s when she meets a familiar-not familiar man, also working for Von Nazi and for this twisted scheme. 

He can’t meet her eyes when they meet, and there’s something about him that’s so familiar but Tatiana can’t quite put her finger on it.

He looks like the same man she met when she last met Kuznetsov, Carvour - Owen, she supposes she should call him by his given name. He speaks the same gruff manner, and his accent still grates on her nerves. But there is something…different about this man. His eyes are different.

She looked into Phoenix’s eyes and she saw nothing but a lust for blood, a greed to hear to cries of the wounded and dying and a need to hear that in order to sleep well at night. This man, the one who carries his face before her, parades himself around Von Nazi’s shoulders like his conscience, this man’s eyes tell a different story. 

This man’s eyes are darker, full of pain and a desire for revenge that Tatiana is willing to bet her entire life story she will see the result of. 

He knows her, she can tell, but he refuses to let Von Nazi know that  _ he _ knows this little Russian doll that Von Nazi is playing for the chance to keep her family safe. It makes Tatiana wonder why and who this man is that he is willing to keep her safe from this maniac - that he knows the man he wears the face of and imitates so well to pass for the original.

(Tatiana doesn’t let herself wonder what happened to the original, doesn’t consider the MI6 mission report of this man dying in action when it was, in truth, a friendly hand that led to his death.)

It takes days for him to finally look her in the eyes, and even then it’s only for a brief moment. He looks away quickly, fast enough for Tatiana to know there’s something in his eyes he doesn’t want her to see, especially not her. She thinks that he thinks that she is still an innocent, though his own experience would prove that assumption wrong.

(She doesn’t hear him talking to Von Nazi, of the Baron’s plot to use her until he can’t use her anymore, doesn’t hear him defend her like she was his own flesh and blood. 

Doesn’t hear him slip when he talks about her, beginning with “Miss” and cutting himself off to continue with “the girl”. Doesn’t see Von Nazi’s eyes slide between the two of them just afterwards, wondering what happened between the two of them before he brought them together again.)

“The Deadliest Man Alive,” Baron Von Nazi introduced the man to her, and Tatiana held her hand out in an act of stark professionalism. It was then Tatiana realized that the man would not look her in the eye, not even as killer to killer. No, he looked at a spot just above her shoulder, any other part of her face but her eyes, never making proper eye contact. He recognized her, she knew, the sudden straightening of his shoulders and correcting of his posture evident to her. 

She realizes what it is he is hiding from her when he accidentally makes eye contact, the traces of a joke on his lips before he seems to realize who he is supposed to be playing, forcing himself back into the mold of the jaded killer. She can’t quite believe it, or she doesn’t want to - so she makes herself forget, forget the difference in this man from the one she met six years before. 

It’s dark and life changing and defies every rumor Tatiana has heard about what happened to that man, her friend, Kuznetsov, Owen Carvour, whatever his name. So Tatiana forgets, because she cannot carry the truth alone, not when the memory of that man is so dear to her. 

(It’s the look of family, someone who’s shared comfortable evenings with her discussing nothing because what can you discuss when you are both spies working on two different sides? She knows the name of his would-be lover, maybe the man who finally became his lover, he knows the story of her family and her desire to be with them once again, both of them sacrificing a tiny bit of themselves for something they can hold on to.)

Tatiana sees her brother, her first friend in the eyes of the Deadliest Man Alive, and she’s not sure she can live with that.

(He’s not sure she can live with that either.) 

**Author's Note:**

> i needed something that would make sense about why Tatiana would/n't recognize the Deadliest Man Alive. comments & critiques welcome


End file.
